Stack difference between VirtualBox and Docker for Windows - docker

Let say I want run Linux application on Windows laptop. (Let say the application is Mongo and it MUST be Linux Mongo). I have 2 options
I can use VirtualBox to run Linux virtual machine with application
I can use Docker for Windows to run Linux docker image with application
My question is: which solution is expected to have better performance? VirtualBox virtual machine has well known overhead, docker instance is a process with low overhead. But between laptop Windows and docker instance AFAIU Docker for Windows establish intermediate virtual machine with Linux (Hyper-V VM?)
Stack looks similar for both options. Could I say that some option has definitely better performance/resource requirements or it depends on specific details?

I would suggest use Docker instead of VirtualBox.
Docker is like independent platform, in future if you want to run on Mac, Linux or windows you just need to copy few files from one place to other to get it set up everything but with VirtualBox you need to copy whole image or re-configured everything.
Docker provides built-in support for all kind of base images, which will help you to get speedy development.
With the Docker, you can destroy or re-run image with few/one command.
Docker provides an easy way to map local folders with VirtualBox you need to configure that.
VirtualBox is heavy as compared with Docker.
In Docker, you will always get the fresh/clean environment if you decide to use Continuous Deployment.
Network mapping (port externalise) and many more things are easily available with Docker.
Again lastly Go with Docker :)
Hope this get you clear idea, Please let me know if you need any help to setup Docker environment for your development.

Related

Is it possible to run Docker Desktop with existing Linux VM?

I have an Ubuntu VM using Hyper-V, specialized for server development with Docker daemon and docker compose already installed on it; is there any way to connect Docker Desktop on the Windows machine to the docker daemon in the Ubuntu VM?
Well, if I'm understanding correctly, you can't really 'connect' Windows Docker Desktop to the Linux Docker daemon; but, you can use various methods to control both of the daemons, and also link them into a single 'unit'.
To control them, my favorite way is to use Portainer (including the Portainer Agent), and to join the daemons I personally created a Docker Swarm for my small home network of Docker daemons on various OS's (I currently have 1 on Win 10, 1 on Raspberry Pi, and 1 on Kubuntu).
Docker Swarm is from my understanding, fading away these days though, in favor of Kubernetes. In my use case swarm was just easier, and had all I needed, so I opted for it over Kubernetes; you'll have to feel them both out on your own for your preference.
As mentioned in the other answer, this isn't really possible in docker for windows. You should probably migrate from your VM to WSL2 anyway now. It'll only get harder in the future. If your work is in git then you just have to reclone your repos and rebuild/pull your images.
However, I use docker professionally every day and I don't see a need for docker desktop. Which suggests that you probably don't need it either. What is it really? A UI that shows you what containers are running? Big deal -- I have docker ps to do that in bash...
I use windows because I'm working on a number of windows projects for clients and dual-boot into Linux for a reality check when windows is driving me insane or whenever I'm not being forced to run windows. I do all my server development in my pure-ubuntu environment (using K3D).
I'm also thinking of dumping ubuntu -- because of 'snap' -- I find it every bit as irritating as windows and I've been looking for an alternative for some time. I only use 3 GUI tools: a browser, postman, and IntelliJ -- if it wasn't for them I'd just install alpine on my laptop and be done.

Docker-machine vs Vagrant? [duplicate]

Every Docker image, as I understand, is based on base image - for example, Ubuntu.
And if I want to isolate any process I should deploy ubuntu docker base image (where is difference with Vagrant here?), and create a necessary subimage after it installing on ubuntu image?
So, if Ubuntu is launched on Vagrant and on Docker, where is practice difference?
And if to use docker provider in Vagrant - where here is difference between Vagrant and Docker?
And, in Docker is it possible to isolate processes on some PC without base image without it's sharing to another PC?
Vagrant is a utility to help you automate setting up VMs. Docker is a utility that helps you use containerization in linux.
A virtual machine runs a whole system, and emulates hardware. Containers section off processes in a single running kernel without emulating hardware.
Both a VM and a Docker image may be Ubuntu 14.04, but with the Docker image you don't need to run the whole OS.
For example, if I want to run an nginx container based on ubuntu, I'd end up with only the nginx process running. No upstart/systemd/init is needed. A VM would run an init system, manage its own networking, and run other services as well. The container image approach that uses a linux distro base is mostly for convenience.
It is entirely possible to run Docker containers with very minimal images. A statically compiled binary alone in an image is all you'd need to run a container.
Vagrant : Vagrant is a project that helps the spawning of virtual machines. It started as an command line of VirtualBox, something similar to Gemfile for VM's. You can choose the base image to start with, network, IP, share folders and put it all in a file that anyone can reuse to spawn the same configured machine. Vagrant has different extensions, provisioning options and VM providers. You can run a VirtualBox, VMware and it is extensible enough to be able to create instances on EC2.
Docker : Docker, allows to package an application with all of its dependencies into a standardized unit of software development. So, it reduces a friction between developer, QA and testing. It dynamically change your application, adding new capabilities every single day, scaling out services to quickly changing the problem areas. Docker is putting itself in an excited place as the interface to PaaS be it networking, discovery and service discovery with applications not having to care about underlying infrastructure. Yes, their are still issues with docker in production, but, hopefully, we'll see the solutions to those problems, as docker team and contributors working hard on those issues. As Docker Volume driver allows third-party container data management solutions to provide data volumes for containers which operate on data, such as database, key-value stores, and other stateful applications. The latest version is coming with much more flexibility, complete orchestration build-in, advanced networking, secrets management, etc. As you can see one, rexray, as volume plugin and provides advanced storage functionality. emccode/rexray We're finally starting to agree on more than just images and run time.

Running .Net Core in Docker in Windows Subsystem for Linux

Practically I want to play with .NET Core within Docker.
So as I understand it from this post to give myself the best flexibility I would install "Docker For Windows". Means I can ultimately deploy my .Core app to a container that is either a Windows or a Linux container. However the Linux container is still a Hyper-V managed Linux container.
1) Is there a way to instead use the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) to do this in the Windows 10 Creators Update? Seems like less overhead than have Windows/Docker manage a separate Linux VM for me?
No, running Docker containers in WSL is not supported (link mine):
The docker engine is not a supported scenario in the short term. I would suggest hitting our User Voice page and upvoting Docker if you're looking to run the docker engine.
The docker client however should be running in build 14342. I have been able to run the docker client and connect to a docker engine running in a VM.
As to why it's not supported:
WSL is a clean-room kernel reimplementation. So it can't, for both technical and legal reasons, simply take the kernel components of Docker and "make it work". They would need to reverse-engineer years of ongoing kernel development and reimplement it. (Or take some other nontrivial approach.)

How can I make a local docker container?

I installed Docker and kitematic. I had VirtualBox before that and used many machines on Vbox. Docker is working, I can pull containers and other stuff like that. Like this link : https://docs.docker.com/mac/started/
I can add containers by:
<i> docker run docker/whalesay cowsay boo </i>
I want to know if there is any way that I can import some of my Vbox machines into docker as a Container locally?
I have ova and ovf file in my local pc. I don't wanna get involved with online containers! Is there any way to accomplish this.
Thank you.
Looks like you have some confusion on the concept of a container.
A container is not a virtual machine.
You can't import virtual machines into Docker. What you can do is build and run a Docker container which eliminates the need for a virtual machine (depending on your use case of course).
You can find a good explanation about the difference between a container and a virtual machine here.
TL;DR:
Both virtual machines and containers allow you to run multiple applications on a shared hardware.
When using virtual machines, the hardware is shared among all applications, however each application runs on a separate operating system.
When using containers, both the hardware AND the operating system are shared, and each application runs in a separate container.
This is in no way an exhaustive explanation regarding Docker containers - there are MANY more advantages to using Docker instead of a virtual machine (portability, consistency, infrastructure-as-code). This is just the main difference between them.

Docker vs Vagrant

Every Docker image, as I understand, is based on base image - for example, Ubuntu.
And if I want to isolate any process I should deploy ubuntu docker base image (where is difference with Vagrant here?), and create a necessary subimage after it installing on ubuntu image?
So, if Ubuntu is launched on Vagrant and on Docker, where is practice difference?
And if to use docker provider in Vagrant - where here is difference between Vagrant and Docker?
And, in Docker is it possible to isolate processes on some PC without base image without it's sharing to another PC?
Vagrant is a utility to help you automate setting up VMs. Docker is a utility that helps you use containerization in linux.
A virtual machine runs a whole system, and emulates hardware. Containers section off processes in a single running kernel without emulating hardware.
Both a VM and a Docker image may be Ubuntu 14.04, but with the Docker image you don't need to run the whole OS.
For example, if I want to run an nginx container based on ubuntu, I'd end up with only the nginx process running. No upstart/systemd/init is needed. A VM would run an init system, manage its own networking, and run other services as well. The container image approach that uses a linux distro base is mostly for convenience.
It is entirely possible to run Docker containers with very minimal images. A statically compiled binary alone in an image is all you'd need to run a container.
Vagrant : Vagrant is a project that helps the spawning of virtual machines. It started as an command line of VirtualBox, something similar to Gemfile for VM's. You can choose the base image to start with, network, IP, share folders and put it all in a file that anyone can reuse to spawn the same configured machine. Vagrant has different extensions, provisioning options and VM providers. You can run a VirtualBox, VMware and it is extensible enough to be able to create instances on EC2.
Docker : Docker, allows to package an application with all of its dependencies into a standardized unit of software development. So, it reduces a friction between developer, QA and testing. It dynamically change your application, adding new capabilities every single day, scaling out services to quickly changing the problem areas. Docker is putting itself in an excited place as the interface to PaaS be it networking, discovery and service discovery with applications not having to care about underlying infrastructure. Yes, their are still issues with docker in production, but, hopefully, we'll see the solutions to those problems, as docker team and contributors working hard on those issues. As Docker Volume driver allows third-party container data management solutions to provide data volumes for containers which operate on data, such as database, key-value stores, and other stateful applications. The latest version is coming with much more flexibility, complete orchestration build-in, advanced networking, secrets management, etc. As you can see one, rexray, as volume plugin and provides advanced storage functionality. emccode/rexray We're finally starting to agree on more than just images and run time.

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